Minister Burke Expresses Concern Over Australia's Temporary Migration Levels

Home Affairs Minister Tony Burke fears Australia could become a guest worker economy, as the number of temporary visas issued each year passes 1 million and the government prepares to announce major changes to the immigration system.

In a wide-ranging interview conducted before the immigration debate dominated Parliament this week, Burke also issued a warning about One Nation’s immigration plan to cut hundreds of thousands of migrants, declaring that hospitals would close and the tourism industry would collapse.

“If you want to do a ruthless cut, like 130,000, you need to be upfront about which hospitals in regional Australia you think should close because they will. And you need to be honest with people about that. You need to let people know that there will be fewer houses built,” he said.

One Nation has proposed cutting 750,000 student and family visas and reducing Australia’s population for three years before returning to 130,000 a year.

“You can’t get to those sorts of low numbers without smashing parts of the Australian economy,” Burke said.

But Burke also acknowledged that the number of temporary migrants had to be reduced after more than 1 million temporary visa holders in skilled, student and working holidaymaker categories entered Australia under the demand-driven system last financial year.

The figures exclude tourist visas, New Zealand residents, airline crew and transit visas.

“It’s not a case of whether or not you defend having immigration; it’s whether or not you acknowledge we did need to pull it back from those numbers, and we haven’t necessarily had all the levers required to be able to pull it back,” Burke said.

There are more than 3 million temporary migrants in Australia without the rights of permanent residents or citizens. Many entered the country automatically pre- and post-COVID based on business or education demand.

They now make up more than 16 per cent of the working-age population, in workplaces, farms and universities, leading former Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet secretary Martin Parkinson to warn Australia was becoming a guest worker economy.

“This is one of the things I’m very worried about,” Burke said. “I don’t have an immediate fix to it.”

The government has been locked in negotiations with the Coalition to give it the necessary tools to make legislative and regulatory changes.

The issue is politically fraught for Labor, facing resistance on its left to any reduction in the humanitarian program and, on its right, business groups lobbying strongly against changes to the temporary intake.

Burke was forced to cancel a migration policy announcement in August after a cabinet debate. He is expected to announce the government’s migration policy at the National Press Club on Thursday, an hour after new Australian Bureau of Statistics figures show the growth in Australia’s population.

Last year, births accounted for an increase of 111,500 in Australia’s population. Net overseas migration was 301,000. Labor’s target is 225,000. The Coalition has suggested a figure closer to 180,000.

The explosion in temporary visas has a limited immediate impact on housing and infrastructure pressures. But it has a flow-on effect as migrants spend years waiting on bridging visas while pursuing a path to permanent residency.

“Let me put it this way: having a large number of people who are here temporarily is not necessarily a problem if they are here temporarily,” Burke said. “But if you have people who are in fact living here permanently and realistically will never live anywhere else...that’s not a smart way to operate.”

Burke also said visa-hopping by international students “is something that does have to be addressed”.

“The challenge that we have is when somebody comes, studies in an area that’s not of skill shortage, then goes to a graduate visa and works in an area that’s not of skill shortage, and then tries to hop around other visa classes and ends up here for a length of time,” he said.

“At no point would Australia have made an active decision saying, ‘We want you to be here,’ but 15–16 years later, they’re living here.”

He said a return to pre-2015 visa rules would give temporary migrants with no valid visa two weeks to leave Australia to avoid US Immigration and Customs Enforcement-style (ICE) raids to get people out of the country.

“Before about 2015, Australia had a really simple way of dealing with it. It was never an ICE-style operation,” he said.

“Effectively, people who didn’t have a visa would be contacted. They’d say, ‘OK, we’re going to give you a bridging visa for a very brief period of time. If you don’t leave during that time, we’ll take you into detention, and you’ll be deported.’ And you just turn over people fairly quickly.

Under that system, Burke said migrants were taken to accommodation near an airport, and once that started, a lot more people realised, “I just know that I’ve got to leave” before their visa expired.

“We know it can be done calmly because it’s been done before,” Burke said, “but it’s more than a decade since we’ve done it that way.”

The explosion in temporary migrants has created a political trap for Labor as immigration becomes a key issue for voters. The government has few levers to bring the demand-driven system back under control.

“Here’s the thing: the decision of making it demand-driven effectively meant that the immigration minister would not be in control of those numbers,” said Burke.

“Now, if infrastructure kept up, then that’s OK. If housing kept up, it would all be OK. You just have business doing what business needs. But when we have a gap so significant between housing demand and housing supply… that means immigration needs to be part of that answer.”

This masthead has previously reported plans to cut back on bridging visas, overhaul the Administrative Review Tribunal, increase deportation efforts for the 77,000 unlawful non-citizens in Australia, cut back on partner visas and curb backpacker visas.

Permanent migration has remained largely stable at 200,000 a year. But the surge in temporary migration has hammered the Department of Home Affairs, which is now grappling with a backlog of more than 400,000 bridging visa applications, mostly from people who entered Australia under the temporary system.

“The best indicator of a system in deep, deep trouble is the backlog of people on bridging visas,” said former Department of Immigration deputy secretary Abul Rizvi.

Burke said a temporary migration program that did not offer permanent solutions threatened social cohesion, community and identity.

“The concept that we have had people living here realistically on a permanent basis, without a pathway to permanence, and also without ever going through a ceremony that matters, where they formally commit to this nation, is something that I don’t think is in the national interest,” he said.

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